FFIEC-External Audit Engagement Letters 5.23.2005

June 1, 2005 FFIEC Program Coordinator 3501 Fairfax Drive Room 3086 Arlington, VA 22226 Re: FFIEC Interagency Advisory on the Unsafe and Unsound Use of Limitation of Liability Provisions and Certain Alternative Dispute Resolution Provisions in External Audit Engagement Letters Gentlemen: People’s Bank (“People’s”), a state-chartered bank headquartered in Bridgeport, Connecticut with assets of approximately $11 billion, wishes to provide the following comments to the above referenced Interagency Advisory (the “Proposed Advisory”). People’s stock is presently traded on the NASDAQ Stock Market; its market capitalization is approximately $4 billion. Since going public in 1988, People’s has had a national accounting firm as its external auditor. People’s is required to have an outside auditor pursuant to federal statutes and regulations. People’s wishes to lend its unqualified support to the Proposed Advisory. As a public company, Peoples is cognizant of and sympathetic to the pressures facing external auditing firms in the era subsequent to the corporate scandals of Enron, Worldcom and others and the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation in 2002. At the same time, People’s has viewed with concern and alarm the diminution of the number of so-called “national accounting firms.” Whatever the cause for the reduction in the number of national accounting firms, the fact that only four are left has created a de facto ...